FOOD FOR THOUGHT: A Hopeful Future for the United Nations Under Kofi Annan

HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENT: Environmental Health Policies: A View From Africa

Good News

Voices

POINT OF VIEW: Faith and Fear of the Future

Good News

· A fascinating new book on environmental security titled
If You Can Keep It: A Constitutional Roadmap to Environmental Security
(Westfield, New Jersey: Brass Ring Press, 1996), by Michael Diamond, who is both
a lawyer and a poet, has been recently published for the American public. The
author argues that the domestic violence clause in Article IV, Section 4 of the
US Constitution can be used by American citizens to demand that the federal
government protect the population from the harm caused by environmental
degradation. The relevant clause from the Constitution reads as follows:
"The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a
republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion:
and... against domestic violence." Diamond argues that the current
environmental conditions within the United States constitute a "condition
of domestic violence." The constitutional discussions are the most
exciting part of the book. Unfortunately the examples of environmental
degradation cited to illustrate the condition of domestic violence do not
provide sufficient evidence to support this very interesting and potentially
fruitful viewpoint. One wonders if the clause could have been invoked in
specific situations by the victims of, for example, contamination by the Hanford
nuclear power plant; or if overdevelopment of a natural resource such as
wetlands constitutes a breach of domestic security within a particular state. It
appears that the author has taken on an almost impossible task in trying to
prove that environmental degradation is so severe that a national condition of
domestic violence exists. While this is an important drawback of the book, the
basic premise remains engaging and certainly the book is worth reading. (Brass
Ring Press, PO Box 2697, Westfield, NJ 07091 or 800-777-8145)

· Small, portable clay cooking stoves can reduce by up to 30
to 40 percent the amount of firewood needed for daily cooking on open fires. The
use of these simple and effective devices not only saves time for the rural
women who collect the firewood, but also reduces the amount of smoke produced by
traditional methods of cooking which in turn reduces the incidence of
respiratory and eye problems. The charitable group Intermediate Technology runs
a program in Kenya and Sri Lanka to teach potters how to make the clay cooking
stoves and trains people in establishing small food processing businesses which
includes the sale of foods cooked on the clay stoves.

SOURCE: British Overseas Development, Issue 48,
Sept./Oct. 1996

· The Jerusalem initiative is an attempt to develop
indicators for monitoring and comparing the well-being of children in more
economically advanced societies. The initiative which plans to make its
recommendations in 1998, is sponsored by several national organizations
including the National Council for the Child (Israel), the European Center for
Social Welfare (Austria) and the International Youth Foundation (US). 35 experts
from various child-related disciplines met in early 1996 in Jerusalem to begin
the difficult task of formulating those indicators using the principles outlined
in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Some of the possible indicators
are mental well-being, risk behaviors, use of time, residential stability, crime
by and against juveniles.

SOURCE: UNICEF, Progress of Nations, 1996

· London's double-decker buses puff out clouds of
carbon monoxide and nitrogenoxides, laced with minute particles of unburned fuel
and soot from their aging diesel engines. This particulate matter has been
blamed for as many as 10,000 deaths a year in Britain. The ideal way to reduce
the emissions is a combination of low sulphur diesel fuel and a catalytic
particulate-trap fitted to the exhaust pipe. Unfortunately, low-sulphur diesel
costs 5 cents more per litre.

However, the solution comes from a Pinmore electronic oil-recycler
which has a secondary filter controlled by a microprocessor. This filter
consists of a pyramid of stainless-steel discs, the top one heats to 160°C
and brings the oil to 120°C. As the oil trickles down, the light fractions
evaporate, the oil's minerals stay behind and even an ancient bus can run
for 60,000 kilometres without an oil change - six times the normal interval.

Figure

Tests run at Leeds University have indicated that emissions of
pollutants such as particulates can fall around half in engines fitted with the
filter which is going into mass production in China.